I’m sure over the past few weeks you’ve seen your friends posting via their various social media feeds that they are super stoked that they found a particular beer. Not since the release of the Sega CD have people been calling stores frantically in order to find out what their current inventory is for such a coveted product. The beer I’m talking about Small Town Brewery’s, “Not Your Father’s Root Beer”.

First I can’t believe that this is the first time we are mentioning this beer on The Brewery, but I can assure you we’ve been drinking it since Memorial Day. Back then the only Root Beer related selfies on the gram were snotty kids using their selfie-sticks to take pictures of themselves with their soft drinks at CiCi’s pizza buffet. Now everyone won’t shut up about “hard” root beer.

Since we like to do our due diligence on this site let’s talk about this brew. NYFRB, which is what we call it, is a pretty good beer. It does taste like root beer with a hint of alcohol. It is sweet with a bit of spice and some vanilla notes. Also, unlike Forest Gump, who must’ve drank 15 Dr. Pepper’s, due to the sweetness of this brew it does not work well as a session and I found it hard to drink more than 4 – 5 in a sitting.

NYFRB is a fun brew that is great to bring to parties and give to “non-beer” drinkers, whoever they are, to wow them because it tastes like root beer. Hell as an everyday beer drinker I thought it was pretty cool too. Also do not let the internet fool you, it is not brewed or owned by Pabst, they were simply contracted to distribute this beer nation-wide.

NYFRB is a good beer, but it’s not going to replace your go to brews in your beer fridge or become an everyday brew for any serious beer drinker. It’s a novel brew, but once you have a few, taken your pictures, posted to twitter or Untappd, told your friends how you went to six beer stores before you found it or that you know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, so you were able to get a case, you’re good to go.

Since Small Town’s NYFRB has taken the beer world by storm I can’t wait to see all of the other breweries release their versions in the hard root beer category and flood the market like the Pumpkin beers have in recent years. Wait, I’m not looking forward to that at all.